Common topics for news reports include war, government, politics, education, health, the environment, economy, business, and entertainment, as well as athletic events, quirky or unusual events. Government proclamations, concerning royal ceremonies, laws, taxes, public health, criminals, have been dubbed news since ancient times.

Humans exhibit a nearly universal desire to learn and share news, which they satisfy by talking to each other and sharing information. Technological and social developments, often driven by government communication and espionage networks, have increased the speed with which news can spread, as well as influenced its content. The genre of news as we know it today is closely associated with the newspaper, which originated in China as a court bulletin and spread, with paper and printing press, to Europe.

Newness

As its name implies, “news” typically connotes the presentation of new information.[4][5] The newness of news gives it an uncertain quality which distinguishes it from the more careful investigations of history or other scholarly disciplines.[5][6][7] Whereas historians tend to view events as causally related manifestations of underlying processes, news stories tend to describe events in isolation, and to exclude discussion of the relationships between them.[8] News conspicuously describes the world in the present or immediate past, even when the most important aspects of a news story have occurred long in the past—or are expected to occur in the future. To make the news, an ongoing process must have some “peg”, an event in time which anchors it to the present moment.[8][9] Relatedly, news often addresses aspects of reality which seem unusual, deviant, or out of the ordinary.[10] Hence the famous dictum that “Dog Bites Man” is not news, but “Man Bites Dog” is.[11]

Another corollary of the newness of news is that, as new technology enable new media to disseminate news more quickly, 'slower' forms of communication may move away from 'news' towards 'analysis'.[12]

Commodity

According to some theoretical and understandings, "news" is whatever the news industry sells.[13] Journalism, broadly understood along the same lines, is the act or occupation of collecting and providing news.[14][15] From a commercial perspective, news is simply one input, along with paper (or an electronic server) necessary to prepare a final product for distribution.[16] A news agency supplies this resource “wholesale” and publishers enhance it for retail.[17][18]

Tone

Most purveyors of news value impartiality, neutrality, and objectivity, despite the inherent difficulty of reporting without political bias.[19] Perception of these values has changed greatly over time as sensationalized 'tabloid journalism' has risen in popularity. Michael Schudson has argued that, before the era of World War I and the concommitant rise of propaganda, journalists were not aware of the concept of bias in reporting, let alone actively correcting for it.[20] News is also sometimes said to portray the truth, but this relationship is elusive and qualified.[21]

Paradoxically, another property commonly attributed to news is sensationalism, the disproportionate focus on, and exaggeration of, emotive stories for public consumption.[22][23] Thus news is also not unrelated to gossip, the human practice of sharing information about other humans of mutual interest.[24] A common sensational topic is violence; hence another news dictum, “if it bleeds, it leads”.[25]

Newsworthiness

Newsworthiness is defined as a subject having sufficient relevance to the public or a special audience to warrant press attention or coverage.[26]

In some countries and at some points in history, what news media and the public have considered "newsworthy" has met different definitions, such as the notion of news values.[27] Many news values seem to be common across cultures. People seem to be interested in news to the extent which it has a big impact, describes conflicts, happens nearby, involves well-known people, and deviates from the norms of everyday happenings.[28]War is a common news topic, partly because it involves unknown events that could pose personal danger.[29]

History

Folk news

Evidence suggests that cultures around the world have found a place for people to share stories about interesting new information. Among Zulus, Mongolians, Polynesians, and American Southerners, anthropologists have documented the practice of questioning travelers for news as a matter of priority.[30] Sufficiently important news would be repeated quickly and often, and could spread by word of mouth over a large geographic area.[31] Even as printing presses came into use in Europe, news for the general public often travelled orally via monks, travelers, town criers, etc.[32]

News is also transmitted in public gathering places, such as the Greek forum and the Roman baths. Starting in England, coffeehouses served as important sites for the spread of news, even after telecommunications became widely available.[33] In the Muslim world, people have gathered and exchanged news at mosques and other social places. Travelers on pilgrimages to Mecca traditionally stay at caravanserais, roadside inns, along the way, and these places have naturally served as hubs for gaining news of the world.[34] In late medieval Britain, reports (“tidings”) of major events were a topic of great public interest, as chronicled in Chaucer's 1380 The House of Fame and other works.[35]

Government proclamations

Woodcut by Tommaso Garzoni depicting a town crier with a trumpet

Before the invention of newspapers in the early 17th century, official government bulletins and edicts were circulated at times in some centralized empires.[36] The first documented use of an organized courier service for the diffusion of written documents is in Egypt, where Pharaohs used couriers for the diffusion of their decrees in the territory of the State (2400 BC).[37][unreliable source?]This practice almost certainly has roots in the much older practice of oral messaging and may have been built on a pre-existing infrastructure[citation needed]. Julius Caesar regularly publicized his heroic deeds in Gaul, and upon becoming Emperor of Rome began publishing government announcements called Acta Diurna. These were carved in metal or stone and posted in public places.[38][39] In England, parliamentary declarations were delivered to sheriffs for public display and reading at the market.[40]

Specially sanctioned messengers have been recognized in Vietnamese culture, among the Khasi people in India, and in the Fox and Winnebago cultures of the American midwest. The Zulu Kingdom used runners to quickly disseminate news. In West Africa, news can be spread by griots. In most cases, the official spreaders of news have been closely aligned with holders of political power.[41]

Town criers were a common means of conveying information to citydwellers. In thirteenth-century Florence, criers known as banditori arrived in the market regularly, to announce political news, to convoke public meetings, and to call the populace to arms. In 1307 and 1322–1325, laws were established governing their appointment, conduct, and salary. These laws stipulated how many times a banditoro was to repeat a proclamation (forty) and where in the city they were to read them.[42] Different declarations sometimes came with additional protocols; announcements regarding the plague were also to be read at the city gates.[43] These proclamations all used a standard format, beginning with an exordium—“The worshipful and most esteemed gentlemen of the Eight of Ward and Security of the city of Florence make it known, notify, and expressly command, to whosoever, of whatever status, rank, quality and condition”—and continuing with a statement (narratio), a request made upon the listeners (petitio), and the penalty to be exacted from those who would not comply (peroratio).[44] In addition to major declarations, bandi (announcements) might concern petty crimes, requests for information, and notices about missing slaves.[45]Niccolò Machiavelli was captured by the Medicis in 1513, following a bando calling for his immediate surrender.[46] Some town criers could be paid to include advertising along with news.[47]

Under the Ottoman Empire, official messages were regularly distributed at mosques, by traveling holy men, and by secular criers. These criers were sent to read official announcements in marketplaces, highways, and other well-traveled places, sometimes issuing commands and penalties for disobedience.[48]

Early news networks

The spread of news has always been linked to the communications networks in place to disseminate it. Thus, political, religious, and commercial interests have historically controlled, expanded, and monitored communications channels by which news could spread. Postal services have long been closely entwined with the maintenance of political power in a large area.[49][50]

One of the imperial communication channels, called the "Royal Road" traversed the Assyrian Empire and served as a key source of its power.[51] The Roman Empire maintained a vast network of roads, known as cursus publicus, for similar purposes.[52]

Visible chains of long distance signaling, known as optical telegraphy, have also been used throughout history to convey limited types of information. These can have ranged from smoke and fire signals to advanced systems using semaphore codes and telescopes.[53][54] The latter form of optical telegraph came into use in Japan, Britain, France, and Germany from the 1790s through the 1850s.[55][56]

Asia

Reproduction of Kaiyuan Za Bao court newspaper from the Tang dynasty

The world's first written news may have originated in eighth century B.C.E. China, where reports gathered by officials were eventually compiled as the Spring and Autumn Annals. The annals, whose compilation is attributed to Confucius, were available to a sizeable reading public and dealt with common news themes—though they straddle the line between news and history.[57] The Han dynasty is credited with developing one of the most effective imperial surveillance and communications networks in the ancient world.[58] Government-produced news sheets, called tipao, circulated among court officials during the late Han dynasty (second and third centuries AD). Between 713 and 734, the Kaiyuan Za Bao ("Bulletin of the Court") of the Chinese Tang Dynasty published government news; it was handwritten on silk and read by government officials.[59] The court created a Bureau of Official Reports (Jin Zhouyuan) to centralize news distribution for the court.[60] Newsletters called ch'ao pao continued to be produced and gained wider public circulation in the following centuries.[61] In 1582 there was the first reference to privately published newssheets in Beijing, during the late Ming Dynasty.[62][63]

Japan had effective communications and postal delivery networks at several points in its history, first in 646 with the Taika Reform and again during the Kamakura period from 1183–1333. The system depended on hikyaku, runners, and regularly spaced relay stations. By this method, news could travel between Kyoto and Kamakura in 5–7 days. Special horse-mounted messengers could move information at the speed of 170 kilometers per day.[56][64] The Japanese shogunates were less tolerant than the Chinese government of news circulation.[59] The postal system established during the Edo period was even more effective, with average speeds of 125–150 km/day and express speed of 200 km/day. This system was initially used only by the government, taking private communications only at exorbitant prices. Private services emerged and in 1668 established their own nakama (guild). They became even faster, and created an effective optical telegraphy system using flags by day and lanterns and mirrors by night.[56]

Europe

Following the decline of the Roman Empire in Europe, elites relied on runners to transmit news over long distances. At 33 kilometers per day, a runner would take two months to bring a message across the Hanseatic League from Bruges to Riga.[65][66] In the early modern period, increased cross-border interaction created a rising need for information which was met by concise handwritten newssheets. The driving force of this new development was the commercial advantage provided by up-to-date news.[7][67]

In 1556, the government of Venice first published the monthly Notizie scritte, which cost one gazetta.[68] These avvisi were handwritten newsletters and used to convey political, military, and economic news quickly and efficiently to Italian cities (1500–1700)—sharing some characteristics of newspapers though usually not considered true newspapers.[69]Avvisi were sold by subscription under the auspices of military, religious, and banking authorities. Sponsorship flavored the contents of each series, which were circulated under many different names. Subscribers included clerics, diplomatic staff, and noble families. By the last quarter of the seventeenth century avvisi long passages from were finding their way into published monthlies such as the Mercure de France and, in northern Italy, Pallade veneta.[70][71][72]

Some European postal routes in 1563

Postal services enabled merchants and monarchs to stay abreast of important information. For the Holy Roman Empire, Emperor Maximillian I in 1490 authorized two brothers from the Italian Tasso family, Francesco and Janettto, to create a network of courier stations linked by riders. They began with a communications line between Innsbruck and Mechelen and grew from there.[73] In 1505 this network expanded to Spain, new governed by Maximilian's son Philip. These riders could travel 180 kilometers in a day.[74] This system became the Imperial Reichspost, administered by Tasso descendents (subsequently known as Thurn-und-Taxis), who in 1587 received exclusive operating rights from the Emperor.[73] The French postal service and English postal service also began at this time, but did not become comprehensive until the early 1600s.[73][75][76] In 1620, the English system linked with Thurn-und-Taxis.[54]

These connections undergirded an extensive system of news circulation, with handwritten items bearing dates and places of origin. Centered in Germany, the network took in news from Russia, the Balkans, Italy, Britain, France, and the Netherlands.[77] The German lawyer Christoph von Scheurl and the Fugger house of Augsburg were prominent hubs in this network.[78] Letters describing historically significant events could gain wide circulation as news reports. Indeed, personal correspondence sometimes acted only as a convenient channel through which news could flow across a larger network.[79] A common type of business communication was a simple listing of current prices, the circulation of which quickened the flow of international trade.[80][81] Businesspeople also wanted to know about events related to shipping, the affairs of other businesses, and political developments.[80] Even after the advent of international newspapers, business owners still valued correspondence highly as a source of reliable news that would affect their enterprise.[82] Handwritten newsletters, which could be produced quickly for a limited clientele, also continued into the 1600s.[78]

Rise of the newspaper

The spread of paper and the printing press from China to Europe preceded a major advance in the transmission of news.[83] With the spread of printing presses and the creation of new markets in the 1500s, news underwent a shift from factual and precise economic reporting, to a more emotive and freewheeling format. (Private newsletters containing important intelligence therefore remained in use by people who needed to know.)[84] The first newspapers emerged in Germany in the early 1600s.[85]Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien, from 1605, is recognized as the world's first formalized 'newspaper';[86] while not a 'newspaper' in the modern sense, the Ancient Roman acta diurna served a similar purpose circa 131 BC.

The new format, which mashed together numerous unrelated and perhaps dubious reports from far-flung locations, created a radically new and jarring experience for its readers.[87] A variety of styles emerged, from single-story tales, to compilations, overviews, and personal and impersonal types of news analysis.[88]

News for public consumption was at first tightly controlled by governments. By 1530, England had created a licensing system for the press and banned “seditious opinions”.[89] Under the Licensing Act, publication was restricted to approved presses—as exemplified by The London Gazette, which prominently bore the words: "Published By Authority".[90] Parliament allowed the Licensing Act to lapse in 1695, beginning a new era marked by Whig and Tory newspapers.[91] (During this era, the Stamp Act limited newspaper distribution simply by making them expensive to sell and buy.) In France, censorship was even more constant.[92] Consequently, many Europeans read newspapers originating from beyond their national borders—especially from the Dutch Republic, where publishers could evade state censorship.[93]

The new United States saw a newspaper boom beginning with the Revolutionary era, accelerated by spirited debates over the establishment of a new government, spurred on by subsidies contained in the 1792 Postal Service Act, and continuing into the 1800s.[94][95] American newspapers got many of their stories by copying reports from each other. Thus by offering free postage to newspapers wishing to exchange copies, the Postal Service Act subsidized a rapidly growing news network through which different stories could percolate.[96] Newspapers thrived during the colonization of the West, fueled by high literacy and a newspaper-loving culture.[97] By 1880, San Francisco rivaled New York in number of different newspapers and in printed newspaper copies per capita.[98]Boosters of new towns felt that newspapers covering local events brought legitimacy, recognition, and community.[99] The 1830s American, wrote Alexis de Tocqueville, was “a very civilized man prepared for a time to face life in the forest, plunging into the wilderness of the New World with his Bible, ax, and newspapers.”[100] In France, the Revolution brought forth an abundance of newspapers and a new climate of press freedom, followed by a return to repression under Napoleon.[101] In 1792 the Revolutionaries set up a news ministry called the Bureau d'Esprit.[102]

Some newspapers published in the 1800s and after retained the commercial orientation characteristic of the private newsletters of the Renaissance. Economically oriented newspapers published new types of data enabled the advent of statistics, especially economic statistics which could inform sophisticated investment decisions.[103] These newspapers, too, became available for larger sections of society, not just elites, keen on investing some of their savings in the stock markets. Yet, as in the case other newspapers, the incorporation of advertising into the newspaper led to justified reservations about accepting newspaper information at face value.[104] Economic newspapers also became promoters of economic ideologies, such as Keynesianism in the mid-1900s.[105]

Newspapers came to sub-Saharan Africa via colonization. The first English-language newspaper in the area was The Royal Gazette and Sierra Leone Advertiser, established in 1801, and followed by The Royal Gold Coast Gazette and Commercial Intelligencer in 1822 and the Liberia Herald in 1826.[106] A number of nineteenth-century African newspapers were established by missionaries.[107] These newspapers by and large promoted the colonial governments and served the interests of European settlers by relaying news from Europe.[107] The first newspaper published in a native African language was the Muigwithania, published in Kikuyu by the Kenyan Central Association.[107]Muigwithania and other newspapers published by indigenous Africans took strong opposition stances, agitating strongly for African independence.[108] Newspapers were censored heavily during the colonial period—as well as after formal independence. Some liberalization and diversification took place in the 1990s.[109]

Newspapers were slow to spread to the Arab world, which had a stronger tradition of oral communication, and mistrust of the European approach to news reporting. By the end of the eighteenth century, the Ottoman Empire's leaders in Istanbul did monitor the European press, but its contents were not disseminated for mass consumption.[110] Some of the first written news in modern North Africa arose in Egpyt under Muhammad Ali, who developed the local paper industry and initiated the limited circulation of news bulletins called jurnals.[111] Beginning in the 1850s and 1860s, the private press began to develop in the multireligious country of Lebanon.[112]

Newswire

The development of the electric telegraph, which often travelled along railroad lines, enabled news to travel faster, over longer distances.[113] (Days before Morse's Baltimore–Washington line transmitted the famous question, “What hath God wrought?”, it transmitted the news that Henry Clay and Theodore Frelinghuysen had been chosen by the Whig nominating party.)[38] Telegraph networks enabled a new centralization of the news, in the hands of wire services concentrated in major cities. The modern form of these originated with Charles-Louis Havas, who founded Bureau Havas (later Agence France Press) in Paris. Havas began in 1832, using the French government's optical telegraph network. In 1840 he began using pigeons for communications to Paris, London, and Brussels. Havas began to use the electric telegraph when it became available.[114]

One of Havas's protoges, Bernhard Wolff, founded Wolffs Telegraphisches Bureau in Berlin in 1849.[115] Another Havas disciple, Paul Julius Reuter, began collecting news from Germany and France in 1849, and in 1851 immigrated to London, where he established the Reuters news agency—specializing in news from the continent.[116] In 1863, William Saunders and Edward Spender formed the Central Press agency, later called the Press Association, to handle domestic news.[117] Just before insulated telegraph line crossed the English Channel in 1851, Reuter won the right to transmit stock exchange prices between Paris and London.[118] He maneuvered Reuters into a dominant global position with the motto "Follow the Cable", setting up news outposts across the British Empire in Alexandria (1865), Bombay (1866), Melbourne (1874), Sydney (1874), and Cape Town (1876).[118][119] In the United States, the Associated Press became a news powerhouse, gaining a lead position through an exclusive arrangement with the Western Union company.[120]

The telegraph ushered in a new global communications regime, accompanied by a restructuring of the national postal systems, and closely followed by the advent of telephone lines. With the value of international news at a premium, governments, businesses, and news agencies moved aggressively to reduce transmission times. In 1865, Reuters had the scoop on the Lincoln assassination, reporting the news in England twelve days after the event took place.[121] In 1866, an undersea telegraph cable successfully connected Ireland to Newfoundland (and thus the Western Union network) cutting trans-Atlantic transmission time from days to hours.[122][123][124] The transatlantic cable allowed fast exchange of information about the London and New York stock exchanges, as well as the New York, Chicago, and Liverpool commodity exchanges—for the price of $5–10, in gold, per word.[125] Transmitting On 11 May 1857, a young British telegraph operator in Delhi signaled home to alert the authorities of the Indian Uprising of 1857. The rebels proceeded to disrupt the British telegraph network, which was rebuilt with more redundancies.[126] In 1902–1903, Britain and the U.S. completed the circumtelegraphy of the planet with transpacific cables from Canada to Fiji and New Zealand (British Empire), and from the USA to Hawaii and the occupied Philippines.[127] U.S. reassertions of the Monroe Doctrine notwithstanding, Latin America was a battleground of competing telegraphic interests until World War I, after which U.S. interests finally did consolidate their power in the hemisphere.[128]

World railway and telegraph system, 1900

By the turn of the century (i.e., circa 1900), Wolff, Havas, and Reuters formed a news cartel, dividing up the global market into three sections, in which each had more-or-less exclusive distribution rights and relationships with national agencies.[129] Each agency's area corresponded roughly to the colonial sphere of its mother country.[130] Reuters and the Australian national news service had an agreement to exchange news only with each other.[131] Due to the high cost of maintaining infrastructure, political goodwill, and global reach, newcomers found it virtually impossible to challenge the big three European agencies or the American Associated Press.[132] In 1890 Reuters (in partnership with the Press Association, England's major news agency for domestic stories) expanded into “soft” news stories for public consumption, about topics such as sports and “human interest”.[133] In 1904, the big three wire services opened relations with Vestnik, the news agency of Czarist Russia, to their group, though they maintained their own reporters in Moscow.[134] During and after the Russian Revolution, the outside agencies maintained a working relationship with the Petrograd Telegraph Agency, renamed the Russian Telegraph Agency (ROSTA) and eventually the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS).[135]

The Chinese Communist Party created its news agency, the Red China News Agency, in 1931; its primary responsibilities were the Red China newspaper and the internal Reference News. In 1937, the Party renamed the agency Xinhua, New China. Xinhua became the official news agency of the People's Republic of China in 1949.[136]

These agencies touted their ability to distill events into “minute globules of news”, 20–30 word summaries which conveyed the essence of new developments.[135] Unlike newspapers, and contrary to the sentiments of some of their reporters, the agencies sought to keep their reports simple and factual.[137] The wire services brought forth the “inverted pyramid” model of news copy, in which key facts appear at the start of the text, and more and more details included as it goes along.[122] The sparse telegraphic writing style spilled over into newspapers, which often reprinted stories from the wire with little embellishment.[18][138] In a 20 September 1918 Pravda editorial, Lenin instructed the Soviet press to cut back on their political rambling and produce many short anticapitalist news items in “telegraph style”.[139]

As in previous eras, the news agencies provided special services to political and business clients, and these services constituted a significant portion of their operations and income. The wire services maintained close relationships with their respective national governments, which provided both press releases and payments.[140] The acceleration and centralization of economic news facilitated regional economic integration and economic globalization. “It was the decrease in information costs and the increasing communication speed that stood at the roots of increased market integration, rather than falling transport costs by itself. In order to send goods to another area, merchants needed to know first whether in fact to send off the goods and to what place. Information costs and speed were essential for these decisions.[141]

Radio and television

The British Broadcasting Company began transmitting radio news from London in 1922, dependent entirely, by law, on the British news agencies.[142] BBC radio marketed itself as a news by and for social elites, and hired only broadcasters who spoke with upper-class accents.[143] The BBC gained importance in the May 1926 general strike, during which newspapers were closed and the radio served as the only source of news for an uncertain public. (To the displeasure of many listeners, the BBC took an unambiguously pro-government stance against the strikers).[142][144]

In the USA, RCA's Radio Group established its radio network, NBC, in 1926. The Paley family founded CBS soon after. These two networks, which supplied news broadcasts to subsidiaries and affiliates, dominated the airwaves throughout the period of radio's hegemony as a news source.[145] Radio broadcasters in the United States negotiated a similar arrangement with the press in 1933, when they agreed to use only news from the Press–Radio Bureau and eschew advertising; this agreement soon collapsed and radio stations began reporting their own news (with advertising).[146] As in Britain, American news radio avoided “controversial” topics as per norms established by the National Association of Broadcasters.[147] By 1939, 58% of Americans surveyed by Fortune considered radio news more accurate than newspapers, and 70% chose radio as their main news source.[147] Radio expanded rapidly across the continent, from 30 stations in 1920 to a thousand in the 1930s. This operation was financed mostly with advertising and public relations money.[148]

The Soviet Union began a major international broadcasting operation in 1929, with stations in German, English and French. The Nazi Party made use of the radio in its rise to power in Germany, with much of its propaganda focused on attacking the Soviet Bolsheviks. The British and Italian foreign radio services competed for influence in North Africa. All four of these broadcast services grew increasingly vitriolic as the European nations prepared for war.[149]

The war provided an opportunity to expand radio and take advantage of its new potential. The BBC reported on Allied invasion of Normandy on 8:00 a.m. of the morning it took place, and including a clip from German radio coverage of the same event. Listeners followed along with developments throughout the day.[150] The U.S. set up its Office of War Information which by 1942 sent programming across South America, the Middle East, and East Asia.[151]Radio Luxembourg, a centrally located high-power station on the continent, was seized by Germany, and then by the United States—which created fake news programs appearing as though they were created by Germany.[152] Targeting American troops in the Pacific, the Japanese government broadcast the "Zero Hour" program, which included news from the U.S. to make the soldiers homesick.[153] But by the end of the war, Britain had the largest radio network in the world, broadcasting internationally in 43 different languages.[154] Its scope would eventually be surpassed (by 1955) by the worldwide Voice of America programs, produced by the United States Information Agency.[155]

In Britain and the United States, television news watching rose dramatically in the 1950s and by the 1960s supplanted radio as the public's primary source of news.[156] In the U.S., television was run by the same networks which owned radio: CBS, NBC, and an NBC spin-off called ABC.[157]Edward R. Murrow, who first entered the public ear as a war reporter in London, made the big leap to television to become an iconic newsman on CBS (and later the director of the United States Information Agency).[158]

In 1996, the Qatar-owned broadcaster Al Jazeera emerged as a powerful alternative to the Western media, capitalizing in part on anger in the Arab & Muslim world regarding biased coverage of the Gulf War. Al Jazeera hired many news workers conveniently laid off by BBC Arabic Television, which closed in April 1996. It used Arabsat to broadcast.[159]

Internet

The early internet, known as ARPANET, was controlled by the U.S. Department of Defense and used mostly by academics. It became available to a wider public with the release of the Netscape browser in 1994.[164] At first, news websites were mostly archives of print publications.[165] An early online newspaper was the Electronic Telegraph, published by The Daily Telegraph.[166][167] A 1994 earthquake in California was one of the first big stories to be reported online in real time.[168] In 1995, the release of web browser Netscape made news sites accessible to more people.[168] On the day of the Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995, people flocked to newsgroups and chatrooms to discuss the situation and share information. The Oklahoma City Daily posted news to its site within hours. Two of the only news sites capable of hosting images, the San Jose Mercury News and Time magazine, posted photographs of the scene.[168]

Quantitatively, the internet has massively expanded the sheer volume of news items available to one person. The speed of news flow to individuals has also reached a new plateau.[169] This insurmountable flow of news can daunt people and cause information overload. Zbigniew Brzezinski called this period the “technetronic era”, in which “global reality increasingly absorbs the individual, involves him, and even occasionally overwhelms him.”[170]

In cases of government crackdowns or revolutions, the Internet has often become a major communication channel for news propagation; while it's a (relatively) simple act to shut down a newspaper, radio or television station, mobile devices such as smartphones and netbooks are much harder to detect and confiscate. The propagation of internet-capable mobile devices has also given rise to the citizen journalist, who provide an additional perspective on unfolding events.

Newspaper

Most large cities in the United States historically had morning and afternoon newspapers. With the addition of new communications media, afternoon newspapers have shut down and morning newspapers have lost circulation. Weekly newspapers have somewhat increased.[172] In more and more cities, newspapers have established local market monopolies—i.e., a single newspaper is the only one in town. This process has accelerated since the 1980s, commensurate with a general trend of consolidation in media ownership.[173] In China, too, newspapers have gained exclusive status, city-by-city, and pooled into large associations such as Chengdu Business News. These associations function like news agencies, challenging the hegemony of Xinhua as a news provider.[136]

About one-third of newspaper revenue comes from sales; the majority comes from advertising.[174] Newspapers have struggled to maintain revenue given declining circulation and the free flow of information over the internet; some have implemented paywalls for their websites.[166]

In the U.S., many newspapers have shifted their operations online, publishing around the clock rather than daily in order to keep pace with the internet society. Prognosticators have suggested that print newspapers will vanish from the U.S. in 5–20 years.[166]

Television

Internationally distributed cable news channels include BBC News, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and Sky News. Televisions are densely concentrated in the United States (98% of households), and the average American watches 4 hours of television programming each day. In other parts of the world, such as Kenya—especially rural areas without much electricity—television is rare.[171]

The largest supplier of international video news is Reuters TV, with 409 subscribers in 83 countries, 38 bureaus, and a reported audience of 1.5 billion people each day. The other major video news service is Associated Press Television News. These two major agencies have agreements to exchange video news with ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and Eurovision—itself a sizeable video news exchange.[175]CNN International leads the world in live broadcasting in times of crisis.[161]

Internet

Online journalism is news that is reported on the Internet. News can be delivered more quickly through this method of news as well as accessed more easily. The internet era has transformed the understanding of news. Because the internet allows communication which is not only instantaneous, but also bi- or multi-directional, it has blurred the boundaries of who is a legitimate news producer. A common type of internet journalism is called blogging, which is a service of persistently written articles uploaded and written by one or more individuals. Millions of people in countries such as the United States and South Korea have taken up blogging. Many blogs have rather small audiences; some blogs are read by millions each month.[176] Social media sites, especially Twitter and Facebook, have become an important source of breaking news information and for disseminating links to news websites. Twitter declared in 2012: “It’s like being delivered a newspaper whose headlines you’ll always find interesting – you can discover news as it’s happening, learn more about topics that are important to you, and get the inside scoop in real time.”[177] Cell phone cameras have normalized citizen photojournalism.[178]

Michael Schudson, professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, has said that "[e]verything we thought we once knew about journalism needs to be rethought in the Digital Age."[179] Today the work of journalism can be done from anywhere and done well. It requires no more than a reporter and a laptop. In that way, journalistic authority seems to have become more individual- and less institution-based. But does the individual reporter always have to be an actual journalist? Or can journalistic work be done from anywhere and by anyone? These are questions that refer to the core of journalistic practice and the definition of "news" itself. As Schudson has given emphasis to, the answer is not easily found; "the ground journalists walk upon is shaking, and the experience for both those who work in the field and those on the outside studying it is dizzying".[179]

Schudson has identified the following six specific areas where the ecology of news in his opinion has changed:

The line between the reader and writer has blurred.

The distinction among tweet, blog post, Facebook, newspaper story, magazine article, and book has blurred.

The line between professionals and amateurs has blurred, and a variety of "pro-am" relationships has emerged.

The boundaries delineating for-profit, public, and non-profit media have blurred, and the cooperation across these models of financing has developed.

Within commercial news organizations, the line between the news room and the business office has blurred.

The line between old media and new media has blurred, practically beyond recognition.[180]

These alterations inevitably have fundamental ramifications for the contemporary ecology of news. "The boundaries of journalism, which just a few years ago seemed relatively clear, and permanent, have become less distinct, and this blurring, while potentially the foundation of progress even as it is the source of risk, has given rise to a new set of journalistic principles and practices",[181] Schudson puts it. It is indeed complex, but it seems to be the future.

Online news has also changed the geographic reach of individual news stories, diffusing readership from city-by-city markets to a potentially global audience.[166]

Because internet does not have the “column inches” limitation of print media, online news stories can, but don't always, come bundled with supplementary material. The medium of the world wide web also enables hyperlinking, which allows readers to navigate to other pages related to the one they're reading.[166]

Despite these changes, some studies have concluded that internet news coverage remains fairly homogenous and dominated by news agencies.[182][183] And journalists working with online media do not identify significantly different criteria for newsworthiness than print journalists.[23]

News agencies

Reuters office in Bonn, Germany, 1988

News agencies are services which compile news and disseminate it in bulk. Because they disseminate information to a wide variety of clients, who repackage the material as news for public consumption, news agencies tend to use less controversial language in their reports. Despite their importance, news agencies are not well known by the general public. They keep low profiles and their reporters usually do not get bylines.[18][184]

News agencies, especially Reuters and the newly important Bloomberg News, convey both news stories for mass audiences and financial information of interest to businesses and investors.[187][188] Bloomberg LP, a private company founded by Michael Bloomberg in 1981, made rapid advances with computerized stock market reporting updated in real time. Its news service continued to exploit this electronic advantage by combining computer-generated analytics with text reporting. Bloomberg linked with Agence France Presse in the 1990s.[188]

Following the marketization of the Chinese economy and the media boom of the 1990s, Xinhua has adopted some commercial practices including subscription fees, but it remains government-subsidized. It provides newswire, news photos, economic information, and audio and video news. Xinhua has a growing number of subscribers, totaling 16,969 in 2002, including 93% of Chinese newspapers.[136] It operates 123 foreign bureaus and produces 300 news stories each day.[189]

On the internet, news aggregators play a role similar to that of the news agency—and, because of the sources they select, tend to transmit news stories which originate from the main agencies. Of articles displayed by Yahoo! News in the U.S., 91.7% come from news agencies: 39.4% from AP, 30.9% AFP, and 21.3% Reuters. In India, 60.1% of Yahoo! News stories come from Reuters. Google News relies somewhat less on news agencies, and has shown high volatility, in the sense of focusing heavily on the most recent handful of salient world events.[182] In 2010, Google News redesigned its front page with automatic geotargeting, which generated a selection of local news items for every viewer.[191]

Global news system

In the 20th century, global news coverage was dominated by a combination of the “Big Four” news agencies—Reuters, Associated Press, Agence France Press, and United Press International—representing the Western bloc, and the Communist agencies: TASS from the Soviet Union, and Xinhua from China.[192] Studies of major world events, and analyses of all international news coverage in various newspapers, consistently found that a large majority of news items originated from the four biggest wire services.[182]

Television news agencies include Associated Press Television News, which bought and incorporated World Television News; and Reuters Television.[175][193] Bloomberg News created in the 1990s, expanded rapidly to become a player in the realm of international news.[187] The Associated Press also maintains a radio network with thousands of subscribers worldwide; it is the sole provider of international news to many small stations.[175]

By some accounts, dating back to the 1940s, the increasing interconnectedness of the news system has accelerated the pace of world history itself.[194]

New World Information and Communication Order

The global news system is dominated by agencies from Europe and the United States, and reflects their interests and priorities in its coverage.[195] Euro-American control of the global news system has led to criticism; that events around the world are constantly compared to events like the Holocaust and World War Two which are considered foundational in the West.[196] Since the 1960s, a significant amount of news reporting from the Third World has been characterized by some form “development journalism”, a paradigm which focuses on long-term development projects, social change, and nation-building.[197] When in 1987 the U.S. media reported on a riot in the Dominican Republic—the first major news item regarding that country in years—the resulting decline in tourism lasted for years and had a noticeable effect on the economy.[198] The English language predominates in global news exchanges.[199] Critics have accused the global news system of perpetuating cultural imperialism.[163][200][201] Critics further charge that the Western media conglomerates maintain a bias towards the status quo economic order, especially a pro-corporate bias.[200]

Further transformation in global news flow

By the 1980s, much of the Third World had succumbed to a debt crisis resulting from unrepayably large loans accumulated since the 1960s. At this point, the World Bank took an active role in the governance of many countries, and its authority extended to communications policy. The policy of developing Third World media gave way to a global regime of free trade institutions like the World Trade Organization, which also protected the free flow of information across borders.[209] The World Bank also promoted privatization of national telecommunications, which afforded large multinational corporations the opportunity to purchase networks and expand operations in the Third World.[210][211]

In countries with less telecommunications infrastructure, people, especially youth, tend today to get their news predominantly from mobile phones and, less so, from the internet. Older folks listen more to the radio. The government of China is a major investor in Third World telecommunications, especially in Africa.[212] Some issues relating to global information flow were revisited in light of the internet at the 2003/2005 World Summit on the Information Society, a conference which emphasized the role of civil society and the private sector in information society governance.[213]

News values are the professional norms of journalism. Commonly, news content should contain the "Five Ws" (who, what, when, where, why, and also how) of an event. There should be no questions remaining. Newspapers normally place hard news stories on the first pages, so the most important information is at the beginning. Busy readers can read as little or as much as they desire. Local stations and networks with a set format must take news stories and break them down into the most important aspects due to time constraints.

Journalists are often expected to aim for objectivity; reporters claim to try to cover all sides of an issue without bias, as compared to commentators or analysts, who provide opinion or personal point of view. The result is a laying out of facts in a sterile, noncommittal manner, and standing back to "let the reader decide" which view is true.[214] Several governments impose certain constraints against bias. In the United Kingdom, the government agency Ofcom (Office of Communications) enforces a legal requirement of “impartiality” on news broadcasters.[215] Both newspapers and broadcast news programs in the United States are generally expected to remain neutral and avoid bias except for clearly indicated editorial articles or segments. Many single-party governments have operated state-run news organizations, which may present the government's views.

Mid-twentieth-century news reporting in the United States focused on political and local issues with important socio-economic impacts, such as the landing of a living person on the moon or the cold war. The focus similarly remains on political and local issues; the news mass media now comes under criticism for over-emphasis on "non-news" and "gossip" such as celebrities' personal social issues, local issues of little merit, as well as biased sensationalism of political topics such as terrorism and the economy. The dominance of celebrity and social news, the blurring of the boundary between news and reality shows and other popular culture, and the advent of citizen journalism may suggest that the nature of 'news' and news values are evolving and that traditional models of the news process are now only partially relevant.[216] Newsworthiness does not only depend on the topic, but also the presentation of the topic and the selection of information from that topic.

Although newswriters have always laid claim to truth and objectivity, the modern values of professional journalism were established beginning in the late 1800s and especially after World War I, when groups like the American Society of Newspaper Editors codified rules for unbiased news reporting. These norms held the most sway in American and British journalism, and were scorned by some other countries.[217][218] These ideas have become part of the practice of journalism across the world.[219] Soviet commentators said stories in the Western press were trivial distractions from reality, and emphasized a socialist realism model focusing on developments in everyday life.[220]

Even in those situations where objectivity is expected, it is difficult to achieve, and individual journalists may fall foul of their own personal bias, or succumb to commercial or political pressure. Similarly, the objectivity of news organizations owned by conglomerated corporations fairly may be questioned, in light of the natural incentive for such groups to report news in a manner intended to advance the conglomerate's financial interests. Individuals and organizations who are the subject of news reports may use news management techniques to try to make a favourable impression.[221] Because each individual has a particular point of view, it is recognized that there can be no absolute objectivity in news reporting.[222] Journalists can collectively shift their opinion over what is a controversy up for debate and what is an established fact, as evidenced by homogenization during the 2000s of news coverage of climate change.[223]

Some commentators on news values have argued that journalists' training in news values itself represents a systemic bias of the news. The norm of objectivity leads journalists to gravitate towards certain types of acts and exclude others. A journalist can be sure of objectivity in reporting that an official or public figure has made a certain statement. This is one reason why so much news reporting is devoted to official statements.[224] This lemma dates back to the early history of public news reporting, as exemplified by an English printer who on 12 March 1624 published news from Brussels in the form of letters, with the prefacing comment: “Now because you shall not say, that either out of my owne conceit I misliked a phrase, or presumptuously tooke upon me to reforme any thing amisse, I will truly set you downe their owne words.”[225]

Feminist critiques argue that discourse defined as objective by news organizations reflects a male-centered perspective.[226] In their selection of sources, journalists rely heavily on men as sources of authoritative- and objective-seeming statements.[227] News reporting has also tended to discuss women differently, usually in terms of appearance and relationship to men.[228]

The critique of traditional norms of objectivity comes from within news organizations as well. Said Peter Horrocks, head of television news at BBC: “The days of middle-of-the-road, balancing Left and Right, impartiality are dead. […] we need to consider adopting what I like to think of as a much wider 'radical impartiality' – the need to hear the widest range of views – all sides of the story.”[215]

Social organization of news production

News organizations

Viewed from a sociological perspective, news for mass consumption is produced in hierarchically structured organizations. Reporters, making up a larger group near the bottom of the structure, are given significant autonomy in researching and preparing reports. Occasionally, decision-makers higher in the structure may intervene.[229] Owners at the top of the news hierarchy influence the content of news indirectly but substantially. The professional norms of journalism discourage overt censorship. Therefore, news organizations have covert but unshakeable policies about how to cover certain topics. These policies are conveyed to journalists through socialization on the job. Journalists never receive the policy in writing; they simply learn how things are done.[230][231] Journalists comply with these rules for various reasons, including job security.[232] Journalists are also systematically influenced by their education, up to and including journalism school.[233]

News production is routinized in several ways. News stories use well-understood formats and subgenres which vary by topic. “Rituals of objectivity”, such as pairing a quotation from one group with a quotation from a competing group, dictate the construction of most news narratives. Many news items, which revolve around press conferences or other scheduled events, are predictable in advance. Further predictability is established by assigning each journalist to a beat: a domain of human affairs, usually involving government or commerce, in which certain types of events routinely occur.[234]

A common scholarly frame for understanding news production is to examine the role of gatekeepers in the flow of information. In other words, to ask why and how certain representations of reality make their way from news producers to news consumers.[235] Obvious gatekeepers include journalists, news agency staff, and wire editors of newspapers.[236] Ideology, personal preferences, source of news, and length of a story are among the many considerations which influence gatekeepers.[237] Although social media have changed the structure of news dissemination, gatekeeper effects may obtain in this case also due to the role of a few extremely well-connected nodes in the social network.[238]

New factors have emerged in internet-era newsrooms. One issue is “click-thinking”, the editorial selection of news stories—and of journalists—who can generate the most website hits and thus advertising revenue. Unlike a newspaper, a news website has differentiated pages and intensive data collection, enabling rapid feedback about which stories are popular and who reads them.[184][239] The drive for speedy online postings, some journalists have acknowledged, has altered norms of fact-checking so that verification takes place after publication.[184][240]

Journalists' sometimes unattributed 'cannibalization' of other news sources can also increase the homogeneity of news feeds.[241] The digital age can accelerate the problem of circular reporting: propagation of the same error through increasingly reliable sources. In 2009, a number of journalists were embarrassed after all reproducing a fictional quotation, originating from Wikipedia.[241][242]

News organizations have historically been male-dominated, though women have acted as journalists since at least the 1880s. The number of female journalists has increased over time, but organizational hierarchies remain controlled mostly by men.[243] Studies of British news organizations estimate that more than 80% of decision-makers are men.[244] Similar studies have found 'old boys' networks' in control of news organizations in the United States and the Netherlands.[245] Further, newsrooms tend to divide journalists by gender, assigning men to “hard” topics like military, crime, and economics, and women to “soft”, “humanised” topics.[246]

Relationship with institutions

For various reasons, news media usually have a close relationship with the state, and often church as well, even when they cast themselves in critical roles.[49][50][247] This relationship seems to emerge because the press can develop symbiotic relationships with other powerful social institutions.[247] In the United States, the Associated Press wire service developed a “bilateral monopoly” with the Western Union telegraph company.[120][248]

The news agencies which rose to power in the mid-1800s all had support from their respective governments, and in turn served their political interests to some degree.[140] News for consumption has operated under statist assumptions, even when it takes a stance adversarial to some aspect of a government.[249] In practice, a large proportion of routine news production involves interactions between reporters and government officials.[250] Relatedly, journalists tend to adopt a hierarchical view of society, according to which a few people at the top of organizational pyramids are best situated to comment on the reality which serves as the basisi of news.[251] Broadly speaking, therefore, news tends to normalize and reflect the interests of the power structure dominant in its social context.[252]

Today, international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) rival and may surpass governments in their influence on the content of news.[253]

State control

Governments use international news transmissions to promote the national interest and conduct political warfare, alternatively known as public diplomacy and, in the modern era, international broadcasting. International radio broadcasting came into wide-ranging use by world powers seeking cultural integration of their empires.[254] The British government used BBC radio as a diplomatic tool, setting up Arabic, Spanish and Portuguese services in 1937.[255] American propaganda broadcasters include Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, set up during the Cold War and still operating today.[256] The United States remains the world's top broadcaster, although by some accounts it was surpassed for a time circa 1980 by the Soviet Union. Other major international broadcasters include the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, North Korea, India, Cuba, and Australia.[257] Around the world (and especially, formerly, in the Soviet bloc), international news sources such as the BBC World Service are often welcomed as alternatives to domestic state-run media.[258][259]

Governments have also funneled programming through private news organizations, as when the British government arranged to insert news into the Reuters feed during and after World War Two.[260] Past revelations have suggested that the U.S. military and intelligence agencies create news stories which they disseminate secretly into the foreign and domestic media. Investigation into the Central Intelligence Agency pursued in the 1970s found that it owned hundreds of news organizations (wire services, newspapers, magazines) outright.[261][262] Soviet news warfare also involved the creation of front groups, like the International Organization of Journalists. The Russian KGB heavily pursued a strategy of disinformation, planting false stories which made their way to news outlets worldwide.[263]

Broadcasts into Iraq before the Second Gulf War mimicked the style of local programming.[264] The US also launched Middle East Broadcasting Networks, featuring the satellite TV station Alhurra and radio station Radio Sawa to beam 24-hour programming to Iraq and environs.[265]

Today, Al Jazeera, a TV and internet news network owned by the government of Qatar, has become one of the foremost news sources in the world, appreciated by millions as an alternative to the Western media.[266] State-owned China Central Television operates 18 channels and reaches more than a billion viewers worldwide.[267] Iran's Press TV and Russia's Russia Today, branded as RT, also have multiplatform presences and large audiences.

Public relations

If important things of life to-day consist of trans-atlantic radiophone talks arranged by commercial telephone companies; if they consist of inventions that will be commercially advantageous to the men who market them; if they consist of Henry Fords with epoch-making cars—then all this is news.

As distinct from advertising, which deals with marketing distinct from news, public relations involves the techniques of influencing news in order to give a certain impression to the public. A standard public relations tactic, the “third-party technique”, is the creation of seemingly independent organizations, which can deliver objective-sounding statements to news organizations without revealing their corporate connections.[268] Public relations agencies can create complete content packages, such as Video News Releases, which are rebroadcast as news without commentary or detail about their origin.[269] Video news releases seem like normal news programming, but use subtle product placement and other techniques to influence viewers.[270]

Public relations releases offer valuable newsworthy information to increasingly overworked journalists on deadline.[241] (This pre-organized news content has been called an information subsidy.)[271] The journalist relies on appearances of autonomy and even opposition to established interests—but the public relations agent seek to conceal their client's influence on the news,. Thus, public relations works its magic in secret.[253][272]

Public relations can dovetail with state objectives, as in the case of the 1990 news story about Iraqi soldiers taking “babies out of incubators” in Kuwaiti hospitals.[273] During the Nigerian Civil War, both the federal government and the secessionist Republic of Biafra hired public relations firms, which competed to influence public opinion in the West, and between them established some of the key narratives employed in news reports about the war.[274]

Overall, the position of the public relations industry has grown stronger, while the position of news producers has grown weaker. Public relations agents mediate the production of news about all sectors of society.[272]

News consumption

Over the centuries, commentators on newspapers and society have repeatedly observed widespread human interest in news.[4][275] Elite members of a society's political and economic institutions might rely on news as one limited source of information, for the masses, news represents a relatively exclusive window onto the operations by which a society is managed.[276]

Regular people in societies with news media often spend a lot of time reading or watching news reports.[277] Newspapers became significant aspects of national and literary culture—as exemplified by James Joyce's Ulysses, which derives from the newspapers of June 16 (and thereabouts), 1904, and represents the newspaper office itself as a vital part of life in Dublin.[278]

A 1945 study by sociologist Bernard Berelson found that during the 1945 New York newspaper strike, New Yorkers exhibited a virtual addiction to news, describing themselves as “lost”, “nervous”, “isolated”, and “suffering” due to the withdrawal.[279] Television news has become still further embedded in everyday life, with specific programming anticipated at different times of day.[280] Children tend to find the news boring, too serious, or emotionally disturbing. They come to perceive news as characteristic of adulthood, and begin watching television news in their teenage years because of the adult status it confers.[281]

People exhibit various forms of skepticism towards the news. Studies of tabloid readers found that many of them gain pleasure from seeing through the obviously fake or poorly constructed stories—and get their “real news” from television.[282]

Social and cultural cohesion

An important feature distinguishing news from private information transfers is the impression that when one reads (or hears, or watches) it, one joins a larger public.[283] In this regard news serves to unify its receivers under the banner of a culture, or a society, as well as into the sub-demographics of a society targeted by their favorite kind of news.[284] News thus plays a role in nation-building, the construction of a national identity.[285]

With the new interconnectedness of global media, the experience of receiving news along with a world audience reinforces the social cohesion effect on a larger scale.[286] As a corollary, global media culture may erode the uniqueness and cohesion of national cultures.[200]

Public sphere

This collective form experience can be understood to constitute a political realm or public sphere.[283][287] In this view, the news media constitute a fourth estate which serves to check and balance the operations of government.[280]

This idea, at least as a goal to be sought, has re-emerged in the era of global communications.[288] Today, unprecedented opportunities exist for public analysis and discussion of world events.[289] According to one interpretation of the CNN effect, instantaneous global news coverage can rally public opinion as never before to motivate political action.[290] In 1989, local and global communications media enabled instant exposure to and discussion of the Chinese government's actions in Tiananmen Square. The news about Tiananmen Square traveled over fax machine, telephone, newspaper, radio, and television, and continued to travel even after the government imposed new restrictions on local telecommunications.[291]

News events

As the technological means for disseminating news grew more powerful, news became an experience which millions of people could undergo simultaneously. Outstanding news experiences can exert profound influence on millions of people. Through its power to effect a shared experience, news events can mold the collective memory of a society.[292][293]

One type of news event, the media event, is a scripted pageant organized for mass live broadcast. Media events include athletic contests such as the Super Bowl and the Olympics, cultural events like awards ceremonies and celebrity funerals, and also political events such as coronations, debates between electoral candidates, and diplomatic ceremonies.[294] These events typically unfold according to a common format which simplifies the transmission of news items about them.[295] Usually they have the effect of increasing the perceived unity of all parties involved, which include the broadcasters and audience.[296] Today, international events such as a national declaration of independence, can be scripted in advance with the major news agencies, with staff specially deployed to key locations worldwide in advance of the life news broadcast. Public relations companies can participate in these events as well.[297]

The perception that an ongoing crisis is taking place further increases the significance of live news. People rely on the news and constantly seek more of it, to learn new information and to seek reassurance amidst feelings of fear and uncertainty.[298] Crises can also increase the effect of news on social cohesion, and lead the population of a country to “rally” behind its current leadership.[299] The rise of a global news system goes hand in hand with the advent of terrorism and other sensational acts, which have power in proportion to the audience they capture. In 1979, the capture of American hostages in Iran dominated months of news coverage in the western media, gained the status of a “crisis”, and influenced a presidential election.[300]

News coverage can also shape collective memory in retrospect. A study of Israeli news coverage leading up to the media event of the nation's 60th birthday found that news coverage of events like the Holocaust, World War Two, and subsequent Israeli wars increased the perceived importance of these events in the minds of citizens.[304]

News making

News making is the act of making the news or doing something that is considered to be newsworthy. When discussing the act of news making, scholars refer to specific models. Five of these models are the Professional Model, Mirror Model, Organizational Model, Political Model, and Civic Journalism Model.[305]

The Professional Model is when skilled peoples put certain events together for a specific audience. The reaction of the audience is influential because it can determine the impact that the particular article or newspaper has on the readers.[306] The Mirror Model states that news should reflect reality. This model aims to focus on particular events and provide accuracy in reporting. The Organizational Model is also known as the Bargaining Model.[305] It focuses on influencing various news organizations by applying pressures to governmental processes. The Political Model outlines that news represents the ideological biases of the people as well as the various pressures of the political environment. This model mainly influences journalists and attempts to promote public opinion.[306] The Civic Journalism Model is when the press discovers the concerns of the people and uses that to write stories. This allows the audience to play an active role in society.

Models of news making help define what the news is and how it influences readers. But it does not necessarily account for the content of print news and online media. Stories are selected if they have a strong impact, incorporate violence and scandal, are familiar and local, and if they are timely.

News Stories with a strong impact can be easily understood by a reader. Violence and scandal create an entertaining and attention-grabbing story.[305] Familiarity makes a story more relatable because the reader knows who is being talked about. Proximity can influence a reader more. A story that is timely will receive more coverage because it is a current event. The process of selecting stories coupled with the models of news making are how the media is effective and impactful in society.

Psychological effects

Exposure to constant news coverage of war can lead to stress and anxiety.[307] Television coverage of the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001, which repeated the same footage over and over, led to symptoms of trauma experienced across the United States.[308] Studies have indicated that children have been traumatized by exposure to television of other frightening events, including the Challenger disaster.[309] Journalists themselves also experience trauma and guilt.[310]

Research also suggest that constant representations of violence in the news lead people to overestimate the frequency of its occurrence in the real world, thus increasing their level of fear in everyday situations.[311]

Influence

The content and style of news delivery certainly have effects on the general public, with the magnitude and precise nature of these effects being tough to determine experimentally.[312] In Western societies, television viewing has been so ubiquitous that its total effect on psychology and culture leave few alternatives for comparison.[313]

News is the leading source of knowledge about global affairs for people around the world.[314] According to agenda-setting theory, the general public will identify as its priorities those issues which are highlighted on the news.[315] The agenda-setting model has been well-supported by research, which indicate that the public's self-reported concerns respond to changes in news coverage rather than changes in the underlying issue itself.[316] The less an issue obviously affects people's lives, the bigger an influence media agenda-setting can have on their opinion of it.[317] The agenda-setting power becomes even stronger in practice because of the correspondence in news topics promulgated by different media channels.[318]

See also

References

↑"News", Oxford English Dictionary, accessed online, 5 March 2015. "Etymology: Spec. use of plural of new n., after Middle French nouvelles (see novel n.), or classical Latin nova new things, in post-classical Latin also news (from late 13th cent. in British sources), use as noun of neuter plural of novus new (compare classical Latin rēs nova (feminine singular) a new development, a fresh turn of events). Compare later novel n."

↑ 5.05.1Smith,The Newspaper: An International History (1979), p. 7. “In the information which [the newspaper] chose to supply, and in the many sources of information which it took over and reorganized, it contained a bias towards recency or newness; to its readers it offered regularity of publication. It had to be filled with whatever was available, unable to wait until information of greater clarity or certainty or of wider perspective had accumulated.”

↑Salmon, The Newspaper and the Historian (1923), p. 10. Salmon quotes Théophraste Renaudot: “History is the record of things accomplished. A Gazette is the reflection of feelings and rumours of the time which may or may not be true.”

↑ 7.07.1Pettegree, The Invention of News (2014), p. 3. “Even as news became more plentiful in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the problem of establishing the veracity of news reports remained acute. The news market – and by the sixteenth century it was a real market – was humming with conflicting reports, some incredible, some all too plausible: lives, fortunes, even the fate of kingdoms could depend upon acting on the right information.”

↑ 8.08.1Park, “News as a Form of Knowledge” (1940), pp. 675–676. News is not history because, for one thing among others, it deals, on the whole, with isolated events and does not seek to relate them to one another either in the form of causal or in the form of teleological sequences.”

↑Stephens, History of News (1988), p. 56. “It is axiomatic in journalism that the fastest medium with the largest potential audience will disseminate the bulk of a community's breaking news. Today that race is being won by television and radio. Consequently, daily newspapers are beginning to underplay breaking news about yesterday's events (already old news to much of their audience) in favor of more analytical perspectives on those events. In other words, dailies are now moving in the direction toward which weeklies retreated when dailies were introduced.”

↑Heyd, Reading newspapers (2012), pp. 35, 82. "... newspapers were defining what news was, categorizing and expanding their domain on the fly. Indeed, Someville argues that 'news' is not an objective 'historical' concept but one that is defined by the news industry as it creates a commodity sold by publishers to the public."

↑Stephens, History of News (1988), p. 3. “The term journalism is used broadly here and elsewhere in the book to refer to more than just the production of printed 'journals'; it is the most succinct term we have for the activity of gathering and disseminating news.”

↑Shoemaker & Cohen, News Around the World (2006), p. 7. “[...] for the journalist the assessment of newsworthiness is an operationalisation based on the aforementioned conditions. In other words, the practitioner typically constructs a method for fulfilling the daily job requirements. He or she rarely has an underlying theoretical understanding of what defining something or someone as newsworthy entails. To be sure, individual journalists may engage in more abstract musings about their work, but the profession as a whole is content to apply these conditions and does not care that the theory behind the application is not widely understood. Hall (1981, 147) calls news a 'slippery' concept, with journalists defining newsworthiness as those things that get into the news media.”

↑Pettegree, The Invention of News (2014), p. 6. “News fitted ideally into the expanding market for cheap print, and it swiftly became an important commodity.”

↑ 17.017.1Boyd-Barrett & Rantanen, The Globalization of News (1998), p. 6. “News agency news is considered 'wholesale' resource material, something that has to be worked upon, smelted, reconfigured, for conversion into a news report that is suitable for consumption by ordinary readers. It has also suited the news agencies to be thus presented: they have needed to seem credible to extensive networks of 'retail' clients of many different political and cultural shades and hues. They have wanted to avoid controversy, to maintain an image of plain, almost dull, but completely dependable professionalism.”

↑Schudson, Discovering the News (1978), p. 6. “Before the 1920s, journalists did not think much about the subjectivity of perception. They had relatively little incentive to doubt the firmness of the reality by which they lived. […] After World War I, however, this changed. Journalists, like others, lost faith in the democratic market society had taken for granted. Their experience of propaganda during the war and public relations thereafter convinced them that the world they reported was one that interested parties had constructed for them to report. In such a world, naïve empiricism could not last.”

↑Stephens, History of News (1988), p. 2. “Sensationalism appears to be a technique or style that is rooted somehow in the nature of the news. News obviously can do much more than merely sensationalize, but most news is, in an important sense, sensational: it is intended, in part, to arouse, to excite, often—whether the subject is a political scandal or a double murder—to shock.”

↑Stephens, History of News (1988), pp. 14, 305. “The desire to pass on tales of current events could be found even in cultures that did no thave writing—let alone printing presses or computers—to whet or satisfy their thirst for news. Observers have often remarked on the fierce concern with news that they find in preliterate or semiliterate peoples. […] It is difficult, if not impossible, to find a society that does not exchange news and that does not build into its rituals and customs means for facilitating that exchange.”

↑Stephens, History of News (1988), p. 8. “A particularly lively forum for the exchange of news by word of mouth—the coffeehouse—flourished in England well after the development of the newspaper, and in some countries the coffeehouse has survived even the introduction of television.”

↑Straubhaar and LaRose, Communications Media in the Information Society (1997), p. 366. “Another ancient form of advertising was the town crier, who told the citizenry about the 'good deal' to be found 'just around the corner'. Unlike the signs, which contained only information regarding the merchant, the criers also informed the citizens of the news of the day. Because the crier, or his agent, was compensated for his assistance in getting the advertising message out in the context of the news, there are interesting parallels with the newspaper of today (Applegate, 1993; Roche, 1993; Schramm, 1988).”

↑ 50.050.1Stephens, History of News (1988), p. 27. “Whoever controlled the messengers could select which anecdotes and information would be favored by this treatment. Therefore, whoever controlled the messengers gained not only a conduit to the members of a society—the ability to inform them of new regulations—but gained a measure of power over the selection of news the members of a society received—the power, for example to ensure that they received news of triumphs but not necessarily of debacles. Messengers were controlled, for the most part, by kings, chiefs, headmen. They were rarely channels of dissent.”

↑Kessler, "Royal Roads" (1995), p. 129. "The ability of the Assyrian court to challenge a huge and permanent stream of information seems to have been one of the essential factors for the long maintenance of Assyrian domination, over the vast areas in the Near East."

↑Smith,The Newspaper: An International History (1979), p. 14. “The Chinese civilization was one of the earliest to have found it convenient to set up a systematic news-collection network across a large land mass. During the Han dynasty (206BC–AD219) the imperial court arranged to be supplied with information on the events of the Empire by means of a postal empire similar to the princely message systems of the European Middle Ages, when the postmasters of the Holy Roman Empire were required to write summaries of events taking place within their regions and transmit them along specified routes.”

↑ 59.059.1Smith,The Newspaper: An International History (1979), p. 14–15.

↑Zhang, Origins of the Modern Chinese Press (2007), p. 14. “However, it was in the Tang dynasty that a specific bureau – the Bureau of Official Reports (Jin Zhouyuan) – was created to accommodate the local representatives. During this time, there were many rising powerful dukes, princes or governor-generals in charge of the large territories, equal in size to a modern province in China. These dukes or princes would naturally provide for their own news service at the capital Chang'an, which handled all official documents submitted by these representatives and transmitted imperial edicts in return. Recent archaeological research has uncovered such official reports from the Tang dynasty. Two archive documents of that period, originally found in Dunhuang have been regarded by Chinese scholars as the earliest forms of newspaper in the world (Fang 1997 53–8)”

↑Smith,The Newspaper: An International History (1979), p. 14. “At a later stage of its development, during the Sung period (960–1278), the ti pao was made to circulate among the purely intellectual groups, and during the Ming (1367–1644) was seen by a wider circle of society.”

↑McCusker & Gravesteijn, Beginnings of Commercial and Financial Journalism (1991), p. 21. "Business thrives on the most recent news. The merchants of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, no less than those of today, required the 'freshest advices' in order to conduct their affairs profitably."

↑Smith,The Newspaper: An International History (1979), pp. 18–19. “Since the late Middle Ages a formal network of correspondents and intelligence agents had come into being across the bulk of the European continent, busily sending news of military, diplomatic and ecclesiastical affairs along a series of prescribed routes. The information was handwritten and passed along carefully organized chains, each item being labeled with its place and date of origin.”

↑Kallionen, “Information, communication technology, and business” (2004), p. 21. “Although the businessmen obtained information from newspapers and other public sources, for instance, from the consuls stationed in foreign towns, they placed special value on the letters received directly from their foreign partners. This is precisely the key to the existence of a network relationship: the parties were dependent on the resources controlled by both parties, both goods and information, so by mutual co-operation both parties gained mutual benefits. Long-term, personal networks were particularly well suited for transmitting information that required high reliability.

↑Pettegree, The Invention of News (2014), pp. 6–8. “So this sort of news reporting was very different from the discreet, dispassionate services of the manuscript news men. News pamphlets were often committed and engaged, intended to persuade as well as inform. News also became, for the first time, part of the entertainment industry. What could be more entertaining than the tale of some catastrophe in a far-off place, or a grisly murder? This was not unproblematic, particularly for the traditional leaders of society who were used to news being part of a confidential service, provided by trusted agents.”

↑Pettegree, The Invention of News (2014), p. 9. “The news reporting of the newspapers was very different, and utterly unfamiliar to those who had not previously been subscribers to the manuscript service. Each report was no more than a couple sentences long. It offered no explanation, comment, or commentary. Unlike a news pamphlet the reader did not know where this fitted in the narrative – or even whether what was reported would turn out to be important.”

↑Starr, Creation of the Media (2004), p. 90. “The 1792 law codified the right of newspapers to exchange copies for free with one another, and by the 1840s the average newspaper received an astonishing 4,300 exchange copies a year. Editors relied on other papers for the national news that filled most of their columns. In effect, the federal government was encouraging local papers to become outlets for a national news newtwork that the government itself did not control.”

↑Hills, Struggle for Control of Global Communication (2002), pp. 145–146.

↑Hills, Struggle for Control of Global Communication (2002), pp. 153–178.

↑Oliver Boyd-Barrett, “'Global' News Agencies", in Boyd-Barrett & Rantanen, The Globalization of News (1998), pp. 26–27. “The principal feature of the world's news market in the second half of the 19th century and the first third of the 20th, was the cartel. This was an oligopolistic and hierarchical structure of the global news market controlled by Reuters, Havas and Wolff at the top tier, in partnership with an ever-increasing number of national news agencies. Each member of the triumvirate had the right to distribute its news service, incorporating news of the cartel, to its ascribed territories: these territories were determined by periodic, formal agreements. […] The triumvirate of Reuters, Havas, and Wolff supplied world news to national news agencies in return for a service of national news […] (although the practice was rather more complicated) the national agencies had exclusive rights to the distribution of cartel news in their territories, and the cartel had exclusive rights to the national agency news services.”

↑Wolfe, Governing Soviet Journalism (2005), pp. 25–26. Translating Lenin: “Why instead of 200–400 lines you can't write in 20–10 lines about such simple, well-known, clear, and already mastered to a great degree, widespread phenomena like the base betrayals of the Mensheviks, those lackeys of the bourgeoisie, like the Anglo-Japanese invasion for the restoration of the holy law of capital; like the chattering teeth of the American millionaires against Germany, and so on, and so on. It is necessary to talk about this, it is necessary to register each new fact in this regard, but in a few lines; to pound out in 'telegraph style' the new appearances of old, already known and evaluated policies.”

↑ 140.0140.1Boyd-Barrett, “'Global' News Agencies", in Boyd-Barrett & Rantanen, The Globalization of News (1998), pp. 23–24. “Earnings were generally derived from the sale of news services to media, financial or economic institutions, and governments, which were important as sources of revenue and as sources of intelligence, and it is generally considered that their news services reflected their respective national interests.”

↑Wood, History of International Broadcasting (1992), p. 31. "It was quite normal for the average listener to be depicted as dressed immaculately in full evening dress, seated or standing elegantly with an expensive brand of cigarette in his hand, listening to his set. The BBC was happy to live up to this stereotype. Radio announces always arrived in evening dress, and announcers were chosen from the upper classes of English society. More importantly, they had to be able to speak the King's English just as the King spoke it."

↑Wood, History of International Broadcasting (1992), p. 27. "Thus WEAF planted the seeds of a new business that eventually grew to envelop the broadcasting industry: advertising, public relations, and propaganda. From about 1927 this revolution was under way. Advertising agencies, manufacturers, sponsors, promoters, and the sellers of medical and life insurance were jockeying for places in a world of propaganda disseminated by radio broadcasting."

↑ 161.0161.1Hachten, World News Prism (1996), pp. 45–48. “When a major crisis breaks out overseas, ABC, CBS, and NBC will issue news bulletins and then go back to scheduled programming and perhaps do a late-evening wrap-up, but CNN stays on the air for long stretches of time continually updating the story. The networks' version of the story will be seen in the United States; CNN's version will be seen all over the world.”

↑ 171.0171.1Silverblatt & Zlobin, International Communications (2004), pp. 42–43. “In contrast, the Masai, a nomadic community of cattle raisers in Kenya, Africa, spend their lives on the move; consequently, their contact with the media is sporadic. As a result, members of the Masai community did not learn about the September 11 attack in New York until the following June.”

↑ 187.0187.1Oliver Boyd-Barrett, “'Global' News Agencies", in Boyd-Barrett & Rantanen, The Globalization of News (1998), p. 21. “Bloomberg's influence is greater than the number of its terminals may suggest, as it feeds financial data and economic news through the AP network to AP members and clients in the United States, and to many national networks through national news agencies. Indeed, it boasts having the second largest 'wholesale' news distribution in the United States, after AP> It has print, radio and television distribution in many countries: Bloomberg television is distributed via Astra satellite service in Europe.”

↑Hong, Junhao (2011). ""From the World's Largest Propaganda Machine to a Multipurposed Global News Agency: Factors in and Implications of Xinhua's Transformation Since 1978";". Political Communication. 28.<templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>

↑Hachten, World News Prism (1996), p. 7. “Since World War II, an intricate an worldwide network of international news media has evolved, providing an expanded capability for information flows. This relationship between the capacity and the need to communicate rapidly has resulted from the interaction of two long-term historical processes: the evolution toward a single global society and the movement of civilization beyond four great benchmarks of human communication—speech, writing, printing, electronic communications (telephone and radio)—into a fifth era of long-distance instant communication based on telecommunications (mainly satellites) and computer technology. Harold Lasswell believed that the mass media revolution has accelerated the tempo and direction of world history. What would have happened later has happened sooner, and changes in timing may have modified substantive developments.”

↑ 200.0200.1200.2Silverblatt & Zlobin, International Communications (2004), pp. 28–31. “A major liability of transnational media conglomerates is the loss of distinctive local culture. Transnational media conglomerates have a distinctly American influence—regardless of their country of origin. For instance, although Bertlesmann is a German-based corporation, in 2001, its largest proportion of its revenue (35 percent) came from its U.S. media subsidiaries, including Bantam, Doubleday Dell, and Random House publishing companies, Family Circle and McCall's' magazines, and Arista and RCA record labels.”

↑Boyd-Barrett & Rantanen, The Globalization of News (1998), p. 8. “The UN, through UNESCO, consistently endeavored to encourage the spread and development of national news agencies, and of news-exchange arrangements between them, especially during the great wave of independence in Africa during the 1960s. Setting up a national news agency became one of the essential things, part of the 'script', of what it meant to be a 'nation'. Through a national news agency, a state could lay down information links domestically and internationally which would facilitate the generation and exchange of news.”

↑Chakravartty and Sarikakis, Media Policy and Globalization (2006), pp. 58–72, 133–136. “In almost all cases, a combination of privatization schemes and higher rates of public investment led to double-digit growth in teledensity figures throughout the 1990s and continuing today (see Table 3.3). Private telecommunications operators were drawn to emerging markets like Brazil, China, and India, among others, because technological innovation coupled with policy reforms promised access to lucrative high-density business and urban middle-class consumers. […] The few comparative studies of telecommunications reform in the South show that the political environment – whether the state is responsive to democratic public interest – and its relative power vis-à-vis foreign capital and G8 nations have shaped the terms of reform.”

↑Ali Mohammadi, “Communication and the Globalizing Process in the Developing World”, in Mohammadi (ed.), International Communication and Globalization (1997).

↑Warren Breed, “Social Control in the Newsroom: A Functional Analysis” (pdf), from Social Forces 33 (1955); reprinted in Berkowitz, Social Meanings of News (1997), pp. 108–110.

↑John Soloski, “News Reporting and Professionalism: Some Constraints on Reporting the News”, from Media, Culture & Society 11 (1989); reprinted in Berkowitz, Social Meanings of News (1997), pp. 139–140, 146–152. “One method management could use to control its journalists would be to establish rules and regulations. This bureaucratic form would not be very efficient […] A more efficient method for controlling behavior in nonbureaucratic organizations, such as news organizations, is through professionalism. Professionalism “makes the use of discretion predictable. It relieves bureaucratic organizations of responsibility for devising their own mechanisms of control in the discretionary areas of work (Larson, 1977: 168) (emphasis in original).”

↑Warren Breed, “Social Control in the Newsroom: A Functional Analysis” (pdf), from Social Forces 33 (1955); reprinted in Berkowitz, Social Meanings of News (1997), pp. 111–114.

↑Pamela J. Shoemaker, “A New Gatekeeping Model”, from Gatekeeping (1991); reprinted in Berkowitz, Social Meanings of News (1997), p. 57. “Simply put, gatekeeping is the process by which the billions of messages that are available in the world get cut down and transformed into hundreds of messages that reach a given person on a given day.”

↑Stephens, History of News (1988), p. 5. “Free of an extended view of the history of press-government relations, it is easy to maintain a romantic image of the journalist, when unchained by repressive regulation, as a staunch adversary of government; it is easy to overlook the basic pro-authoritarian role that has been played by those who spread news: their success in occupying the minds of the governed with a belief in the importance, if not the inevitabiltiy, of a system of government.

↑Michael Schudson, “The Sociology of News Production”, from Media, Culture & Society (1989); reprinted in Berkowitz, Social Meanings of News (1997), p. 14. “One study after another comes up with essentially the same observation, and it matters not whether the study is at the national, state, or local level—the story of journalism, on a day-to-day basis, is the story of the interaction of reporters and officials.”

↑Allan, News Culture (2004), pp. 62–63. “To clarify, H.S. Becker (1967) employs the notion of a 'hierarchy of credibility' to specify how, in a system of ranked groups, participants will take it as given that the members of the highest group are best placed to define 'the way things really are' due to their 'knowledge of truth'. Implicit in this assumption is the view that 'those at the top' will have access to a more complete picture of the bureaucratic organization's workings than members of lower groups whose definition of reality, because of this subordinate status, can only be partial and distorted.”

↑James S. Ettema, D. Charles Whitney, & Daniel B. Wackman, in Handbook of Communications Science (1987), ed. C. H. Berger & S. H. Chaffee; reprinted in Berkowitz, Social Meanings of News (1997), pp. 34–37. “In sum, a considerable body of research supports the argument that inter-organizational- and institutional-level forces, realized in a journalistic culture of 'objectivity,' fostered by, and in the service of, progressive liberal capitalism, constrain what journalists report. News thus exhibits an identifiable and widely shared form and a content broadly consonant with the social structures and values of its political-economic context.”

↑ 253.0253.1Van Leuven, Sarah; Joye, Stijn (2013). ""Civil Society Organizations at the Gates? A Gatekeeping Study of News Making Efforts by NGOs and Government Institutions";". International Journal of Press/Politics. 19 (2).<templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>

↑Wood, History of International Broadcasting (1992), pp. 21, 55. “The Reuters news service would be broadcast from Rugby with an insertion written by the Foreign Office. The secret agreement provided that both Leafield and Rugby Radio would carry 720 000 words per year, at a cost of three and a half pence per word. During and after the Second World War, these two radio stations transmitted news whose content had been falsified with the intention of deceiving the enemy.”

↑Perse, Media Effects And Society (2001), pp. 93–94. “Because political events and issues in modern societies typically take place in specialized locations, most citizens experience politics vicariously. […] For elites, information from the media becomes just one of many sources of data. Because of their political involvement and interest and their vast base of prior knowledge, elites treat media coverage as foreground, or sources of new and/or specific information. […] Nonelites, on the other hand, are not so interested in politics, and they have relatively little prior knowledge about political issues. For nonelites, media coverage is not only a source of new data, but their only source of information.”

↑R. Brandon Kershner, The Culture of Joyce's Ulysses; Palgrave Macmillan, 2010; see Chapter Five, “Newspapers and Periodicals: Endless Dialogue”. Also see: James Broderick, “'Give Us This Day Our Daily Press': Journalism in the Life and Art of James Joyce”, Dissertation accepted at City University of New York, 1999.

↑ 283.0283.1Starr, Creation of the Media (2004), p. 24. “Publications weave invisible threads of connection among their readers. Once a newspaper circulates, for example, no one ever truly reads it alone. Readers know that others are also seeing it at roughly the same time, and they read it differently as a result, conscious that the information is now out in the open, spread before a public that may talk about the news and act on it.”

↑Salmon, The Newspaper and the Historian (1923), p. 17. “The newspaper has ceased to be a personal organ and has become a social product; it no longer represents the interests of an individual, but it represents rather a group activity. The press groups society and unifies each group, as Scott-James has pointed out. It unifies society on national lines and thus the press of each country has developed in its own characteristic direction. It unifies the groups interested in religion, in politics, in business, in automobiles, in sports, in education, or in fashion, and from these groups having unified interests there has developed the press that ministers to each specialized group.”

↑Motti Neiger, Eyal Zandberg, and Oren Meyers, “Localizing Collective Memory: Radio Broadcasts and the Construction of Regional Memory”; in On Media Memory (2011), ed. Neiger, Myers, & Zandberg; pp. 156–160. “In Israel, radio played a decisive role in establishing and consolidating the nation during the first decades after the creation of the State (Pansler, 2004). The exclusive position enjoyed by radio in the field of electronic broadcasting during the crucial first twenty years of Israel's existence since 1948, when the press was politically divided and television was absent – Israel's first television channel started broadcasting in 1968 -gave it much weight in setting the collective agenda.”

↑McNair, Cultural Chaos (2006), pp. 6–7. “But [news] is an illusion which, when we receive it, and when we extend to it our trust in its authority as a representation of the real, transports us from the relative isolation of our domestic environments, the parochialism of our streets and small towns, the crowded bustle of our big cities, to membership of virtual global communities, united in access to these events, communally experienced at this moment, through global communications networks. […] It is, indeed, more like the fear and exhiliration experienced by watching a movie on the big screen, but with an added viscerality contributed by the awareness that this scene, unlike a movie, is really happening, right now, to real people.”

↑Park, “News as a Form of Knowledge” (1940), pp. 685–686. In fact, the multiplication of the means of communication has brought it about that anyone, even in the most distant part of the world, may now actually participate in events—at least as listener if not as spectator—as they actually take placein some other part of the world. We have recently listened to Mussolini address his fascist followers from a balcony of Rome; we have heard Hitler speaking over the heads of a devout congregation in the Reichstag, in Berlin, not merely to the President, but to the people, of the United States. We have even had an opportunity to hear the terms of the momentous Munich agreement ten seconds after it had been signed by the representatives of four of the leading powers in Europe and the world. The fact that acts so momentous as these can be so quickly and so publicly consummated has suddenly and completely changed the character of international politics, so that one can no longer even guess what thefuture has in store for Europe and for the world.”

↑Danie Du Plessis, “What's News in South Africa?” in Shoemaker & Cohen, News Around the World (2006), p. 303. “Virtually all references to political significance of news events refer to the historical events of the first part of the 1990s. Current political events are overshadowed so greatly by the start of the political process in South Africa that they have lost much of their significance to the participants. Both black and white participants in the focus group shared this response.”

↑Elizabeth A. Skewes and Heather Black, “What's News in the United States?” in Shoemaker & Cohen, News Around the World (2006), p. 329.

↑Perse, Media Effects And Society (2001), 12. “Some media may be so pervasive and so consistent in their effects that their impact is not noticeable. After all, it is almost impossible find someone who doesn't watch television in industrialized societies. And those light viewers associate regularly with others who do watch television. Morgan (1986) suggested that 'the longer we live with television, the smaller television's observable impact may become'.

↑Perse, Media Effects And Society (2001), 100. “When issues are obtrusive, or directly experienced, such as inflation, the public does not need the news media to alert them to its importance. But, the less direct experience that they have with an issue, the more they depend on the news media for awareness. So, agenda-setting appears to be stronger for less personally involving issues.”